Thursday 9 July 2009

oh yes, now you can listen to it


It is read by Paul English who has also read Mao's Last Dancer.

Paul's work in theatre includes twenty-five productions for the Melbourne Theatre Company, from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure to Janis Balodis' The Ghosts Trilogy; premieres of new Australian work for Playbox by Michael Gurr, Peta Murray, Rodney Hall and Nick Enright; Tom Stoppard's Arcadia with the Sydney Theatre Company; and the plays of Daniel Keene with the Keene/Taylor Project, of which he is a founding member.

Thanks, Paul.
Nice read.

More info?
Go to Fremantle Press.

Monday 6 July 2009

THE AGE - Non-fiction, Fiona Capp, 4/7/2009

THE boarding-school experience - bullying prefects, sadistic teachers and cruel rituals - has produced some classic films and books. While there is much that is familiar about Jon Doust's recollections of ills at a West Australian grammar school in this semi-fictionalised memoir, Boy on a Wire does not simply rehash old themes. From the opening sentence, it is clear that we are in the presence of a writer with a distinctive voice and uncanny ability to capture the bewilderment and burgeoning anger of a boy struggling to remain true to himself while navigating the hypocritical system he finds himself trapped in. Accentuating the narrator's sense of failure is the fact that his older brother excels at everything he does. What saves the narrator from going under and what makes Boy on a Wire much more than a bleak coming-of-age story is Doust's sharp wit. "Justice not only prevails at Grammar School, it is rampant:' If you know an angry teenager, give this to him.

As if this review would make you buy a copy!
(But on the slim that it does, go to Fremantle Press.)